While on the Opie Radio show this week to promote his new series “Mike Tyson Mysteries,” the former boxing champ revealed some startling news.While talking about the perception people have about him as one of the greatest boxers in history, Tyson mentioned past s*xual abuse. The radio show’s host followed up by asking the champ how old he was when this happened.
“I was a little kid, 7,” he said. “[It was] an old man, yeah. One time.”
Tyson, 48, admitted he never saw him again and that he had “snatched me off the street.”
The emotion about the past incident is evident in Tyson’s face as he really opens up about the tough situation.“I ran,” Tyson said about how he got away from the man after the abuse.
There’s an awkward silence, because the hosts of the show, Opie and Jim Norton, are caught off guard by Tyson’s reveal.
“It’s nobody’s business to know,” Tyson said in reply to whether he had told anyone over the years. “That’s why a bunch of entertainers have egos, it buffers their flaws, their demons, which is a demon itself. But it buffers the one you are afraid of. Everybody else if afraid of your ego, but you’re afraid of the demon you’re afraid of.”
When asked if he drastically changed after that day, “I don’t know if I did or not.”
“He is in a good place in his life with sobriety, family and career,” his rep added, in a statement to ABC News.
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